80th anniversary of greatest tank fight - Battle of Prokhorovka!

History does not forgive forgetting its lessons. 80 years ago there was the greatest tank battle - the Battle of Prokhorovka. The legendary battle of July 12, 1943 is one of the key parts of the Battle of Kursk, which decided the further course of military events in favor of the Soviet Union. The heroes of the Red Army fought against the Nazi invaders - aggressors of Germany, Italy, Finland, as well as their European allies, satellites, collaborationist administrations in the occupied territories. Does it remind you of anything? By the way, even now the Western media rewrite history and give the victory in this iconic battle to the Nazi bloc. Olga Medved has collected the true facts.

The morning of July 12, 1943. Smoke flares informed the enemy of the Soviet Army's advance. The Wehrmacht forces and their ideological and economic allies did not expect such an attack, their plans included the "Citadel" - according to which the troops in the Kursk area should be surrounded and destroyed. But the Soviet intelligence learned about the planned offensive and passed this data to the Supreme Command, which allowed to plan the action ahead.

Valery Kulichkov, senior researcher of the scientific and methodical department of the Victory Museum (Moscow):

The information was received that the Germans would try to take revenge for the defeat at Stalingrad and our other cities and retake again the strategic initiative. But the funny thing is that the Germans slept through our Prokhorovka march. What do you mean they slept through it? Well, imagine, hundreds and hundreds of tanks go 350 kilometers forward - the Germans do not detect them. A traffic jam was formed in front of the river, tanks were crossing the river for 7 hours in the daytime - the Germans did not detect them.

Pavel Trubchik, deputy director for research at the Institute of History of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, candidate of historical sciences, associate professor:

In fact, there was a head-on collision. The battle itself lasted one day, 14 hours. In the scale of the WWII and the Great Patriotic War it is very, very fast. The Kursk operation lasted several months, by comparison. The Soviet troops changed their strategy significantly, it was already offensive. And the Soviet troops dictated the subsequent conditions in the course of military operations virtually until the end of the Great Patriotic War.

An unprecedented amount of equipment. The battle went down in history as the largest confrontation of armored vehicles. A total of 1,200 tracked units and self-propelled vehicles met in a duel. The Soviet army was supported both from the air and from the ground infantry. The Germans have more modern armament - Tigers (yes, the ones that are still flashed in news reports today). Their range of fire was about 2 km, our T-34s fired only at 800 meters, but they were more maneuverable, which gave the superiority in the battle.

Ekaterina Kotlovskaya, head of the cultural and educational department of the Museum of the History of the Great Patriotic War:

For the first time, Soviet anti-tank mines TMDB were used. About 500 enemy tanks were destroyed on the southern farce of the Kursk Arc alone. On 1 square kilometer of the planned enemy offensive, the density of mining, let's say, was 1500 anti-personnel mines and 1700 anti-tank mines.

How valuable today, 80 years later, are the memories of the participants of the Kursk defensive battle, who every year, unfortunately, are getting fewer and fewer. For example, Ivan Alekumov, a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, though he has never been near Prokhorovka, was fighting along the arc, in the defense of other cities.

Ivan Alekumov, veteran of the Great Patriotic War:

For 50 days we held the defense. We dug into the ground. We dug trenches, built dugouts. All troops were preparing for this battle. The earth was trembling, the earth was falling. And I fell to the ground, it seemed like the end of the world. Can you imagine when a shell explodes next to you and the ground crumbles on you? The most brutal battles were, of course, in the Prokhorovka area.

5-6 defensive strips, about 300 km deep anti-tank ditches and fortifications. Having a numerical advantage, our troops suffered heavy losses, but the explanation is simple: they were not ready to "hit head-on", unlike the enemy, who had time to strengthen the rear in advance. And the long passage of 350 kilometers in the July heat exhausted the soldiers, but it did not prevent us from winning the battle.

The Battle of Prokhorovka was the turning point of the entire war. One could say that this was the beginning of the Great Victory. A couple of days later, having failed in the "Citadel" plan and having exhausted its tank forces, the Wehrmacht began to retreat. And the Soviet troops launched a counteroffensive.